Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Christopher Walken by Chris Olimpo

Chris Olimpo comes from Montreal and is an Illustrator, Designer and Writer, currently working for Lockheed Martin as a Technical Illustrator. He allows himself to get inspired by his surroundings to create strong influences for current and future reality. This image was an image completed by Chris in his college years at Dawson College in downtown Montreal. He used scratchboard to complete this image of Christopher Walken. I really like this image because I feel it portrays Walken’s personality perfectly. It gives off a feeling of intense seclusion and mystery. He is also well known for his quality of danger and menace, which I feel this image also does. The shadows and highlights on his face are balanced with his one hand on the lower left and is overall a great composition. The hatching technique in the lower left hand is very well done. The subtle details in his hair and face add drama to the image.

3 comments:

The realism in this is amazing. I could swear I am looking at a photo. I agree with your assessment that it does a good job at showing his personality and I also detect a bit of his humorous side in the piece as a whole.

At first I was going to rail at the pointlessness of photo-realism, but then I actually looked at the larger image and was struck by the brushwork. Reminds me of the section on realism in Art History... It's objective, yet you still see the image filtered through the artist's eyes. The formal qualities are impressive, too.